Neither Intelligent Nor Wise, But Definitely Dangerous

If you stay up with current events and read widely enough, especially non-mainstream media, you can often detect the Deep State and its works. Precise delineation is impossible, but the Deep State is the top ranks of the intelligence agencies, military, Departments of State, Homeland Security, Defense, Treasury, and Justice, the Federal Reserve, a myriad of banks, corporations, law firms, foundations, universities, and powerful behind-the-scenes string-pullers. When SLL talks about the Deep State, it is from the same vantage point as the blindfolded Indians describing the elephant: an admittedly limited and ignorant view of an amorphous entity that does its best to obscure itself to outsiders. Deep Staters often hide what they’re doing even from other Deep Staters.

The Deep State may have had its genesis in the late 1800s, when powerful business, financial, and political figures came together to push passage of the income tax amendment and the Federal Reserve Act, essentials for their desire to dramatically expand the power of the federal government. By the end of the second world war, it had coalesced around two unwavering convictions: the Deep State should run the United States government, and the United States government should run the world. These were not the whispers and murmurs of a super-secret cabal, they were openly discussed by policy makers, the media, and academia in the United States and Great Britain, the junior member of a world-dominating Anglo-American axis.

For over four decades, the Deep State depicted the Soviet Union as an existential threat, justifying their consolidation of power, US government global intervention, and repression at home. It gave itself a moral Get Out of Jail Free card: dastardly Soviet tactics had to be fought with dastardly American tactics. Despite ritualistic expressions of regret: “It’s a damn shame we have to do this, but such is the nature of our enemy,” many in the military and intelligence services relished that aspect of their jobs. Few were called to account for their reprehensible deeds, many of which will remain forever unexposed.

While it was Republican Dwight Eisenhower who warned of the “military-industrial complex” in his farewell address, most of what little public opposition that complex and the intelligence agencies have received since then has come from Democrats. After the Bay of Pigs fiasco, President Kennedy fired CIA chief Allen Dulles, reportedly vowing to shatter the agency into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds. The debate rages as to whether his vow had anything to do with his assassination, but the possibility cannot be dismissed. (Oddly, Dulles was on the Warren Commission and by most accounts stage-managed its investigation.)

Democratic senator Frank Church led a Senate select committee investigation on intelligence in 1975. His investigation gave most Americans their first glimpse into the CIA’s dirty laundry, notably assassinations and attempted assassinations of various foreign leaders. (The practice was supposedly outlawed by an executive order issued by President Gerald Ford, which was replaced by one issued by President Ronald Reagan. That order didn’t prevent US acquiescence to and complicity in the murder of Muammar Gaddafi. “We came, we saw, he died!”) Also revealed was the CIA and FBI’s interception, opening, and photographing of domestic mail. Senator Church publicly expressed grave misgivings about the government’s nascent electronic surveillance capabilities. He must be rolling in his grave over what it does now.

It was also the “Democratic” press, primarily the New York Times and The Washington Post, that took the lead in exposing scandals with intelligence angles and opposing some of America’s military interventions, notably Vietnam. Unfortunately, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks the Democratic-dominated mainstream media climbed into bed with the Republican administration. The weapons of mass destruction and the Saddam Hussein-al Qaeda stories, based on doctored and phony intelligence, were sold to the American people as the justifications for the regime-change invasion of Iraq. There were almost no editorial objections to that or subsequent regime-change operations, the Patriot Act’s assault on the Bill of Rights, or to the muddled, impossible to define or limit concept of a global, preemptive war on terror. Although that war has been a predictable failure, the mainstream press will not even acknowledge it’s two most obvious consequences: the further spread of terrorism and the refugee flows from Middle Eastern and Northern African war zones.

The problem at the heart of intelligence agencies and their oversight is the information they collect. It invariably includes dirt that can be used against those who might question or oppose them. There is not a person on the planet who doesn’t have some aspect of his or her life they want to remain private. It’s no mystery why a former KGB agent runs Russia, why all the retirement rules were waived so J. Edgar Hoover could stay on as head of the FBI until his death, how a former head of the CIA and then his son acquired the power base that got them both elected president (and they were trying for number three). Threatened or actual blackmail is a powerful weapon, except for that .000000001 percent who lead unblemished, exemplary lives. That weapon renders a secret intelligence function incompatible with civil liberties and popular control of the government.

The recent election was a revolt by the electorate against their incompetent, corrupt rulers. Hillary’s Clinton’s nomination was the exclamation point on the Democratic party’s moral bankruptcy, a final repudiation of the party and its aligned media’s attempts, however incomplete and compromised, to check the Deep State. Given that abdication, its embrace of the intelligence agencies’ perpetration of fake news, support of an increasingly confrontational stance with Russia in hopes of provoking a war, and tacit endorsement of violence during Donald Trump’s inauguration come as no surprise. Grasping for the power they’ve been denied, they’ll try anything.

There has been much talk of a Deep State “coup” during its battle against Donald Trump, but how can those who control the government stage a coup? What they are doing is taking action against an opponent who has ripped away the facade of popular control and may pose a threat to their power and position. Deep State rule has been neither intelligent nor wise. However, it would be unintelligent and unwise to therefore conclude it’s not dangerous. That it would try to deny the duly elected choice of the American people the presidency bespeaks arrogance completely disconnected from morality. That it would try to provoke violence from nuclear-armed Russia and inauguration “demonstrators” in American cities bespeaks a disregard of extreme risks and potentially catastrophic consequences, not just to the citizenry they despise, but to themselves as well.

They must be opposed, stopped, and scattered to the winds (which would, in a perfect world, blow some of them into prison). Donald Trump may be the last, best hope. The intelligent and wise will be on full alert, prepared for the risks and dangers…should he fail or succeed.